


Victory, Death, or Maybe Both

by DarthDinkle



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Action/Adventure, Aliens, Basically another episode, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Secrets
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-04
Updated: 2018-12-04
Packaged: 2019-09-07 00:14:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16843279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarthDinkle/pseuds/DarthDinkle
Summary: Voltron gets caught in a sticky situation, only to be saved by a massive armada of technologically advanced, unfamiliar aliens that have pledged to defeat the Galra at all costs. Will this new ally be just what the Voltron Alliance needs to win this war, or is this new mysterious race holding secrets that could dismantle everything the Defenders of the Universe stand for?I basically just wanted to write something that would feel like an arc that fits in the show really naturally. So if you just want more cool overall team action, here is the place to look!





	Victory, Death, or Maybe Both

**Author's Note:**

> Heya,  
> I've never written a fan fiction before, so be sure to leave me some encouragement! I don't have any clue how often I'll update, but I won't leave you waiting for TOO long.  
> Enjoy!

The normally smooth-moving metal joints of the Red Lion creaked and trembled in protest of every twist and turn that Lance commanded of it. He gripped the controls of his ship with white knuckles that hadn’t loosened since the beginning of Voltron’s current encounter. Things weren’t looking good for the team at the moment.

The radio was abuzz with the frantic chatter of his friends, but Lance couldn’t spare the concentration to listen to it very closely. He was too busy dodging the rapid bursts of Galra laser fire from the fighters behind him. Every near-miss shook the very frame of the lion and sent a faint tingling shock through Lance’s fingertips. Red had already taken about as many hits as she could take and her speed was suffering because of it. He could feel her overbearing presence weigh more urgently upon his mind with every passing second, protesting each new taxing hit or dodge of a blast. Her purrs were usually strong and reassuring, but now they only served as an unrelenting reminder of how close they were teetering on the edge of a total system failure. The small ships that had been struggling to keep up only minutes before were now steadily advancing to Lance’s flanks. “I’m not doing too hot, guys!”

“Nobody is, Lance!” Pidge snapped, her voice trying to sound irritated, but sounding more distressed than anything. Lance hadn’t seen the green lion since the first wave of glare fighters drove them apart. Now that he was thinking about it, he hadn’t seen any of the other lion in a while.

“We’re getting our butts handed to us! We need Voltron, right now!” Hunk wailed into the comms. Lance grimaced at the panic he sensed in his friends. He was kinda hoping they were doing better than him in some capacity, but that hope was reduced to only a fantasy

“I know, I know,” Keith responded, exasperated. A faint crash sounded in the background of his transmission, but he continued without skipping a beat. “But these fighters have us pinned in totally different locations. We aren’t going to win this battle. Focus on getting out of here!” Escaping? That wasn’t a normal Keith move. Things must be really bad. 

A thunderous crash announced the sudden jerk of the Red Lion. Lance tumbled from his seat with the force of the impact. His body slammed into the control panel on the right, his head left spinning after its own collision with the edge of the glowing surface. So much for helmets. Or seatbelts. The lights of the glowing dashboard around the pilot chair flickered before turning red with even more urgently blinking warnings than were already present. “What the hell?” he grunted, forcing himself to rise into hands and knees with eyes squeezed closed to combat his growing headache. That didn’t feel like the shot of a fighter. Had a cruiser targeted him? Lance, struggling to maneuver in his aimlessly tumbling ship, managed to grab onto an armrest and hauled himself back into position. Loose trinkets and supply packets that had shook themselves out of their proper places flew in every direction. The dots of purple outside the front window that noramaly mark the presence of the surrounding Galra fighters were blurred into thin lines, the Lion spinning out of control too fast to focus on any of them. Lance couldn’t tell which way was up and his head was pounding in rhythm with blaring warnings of Red’s monitors.

Lance yanked on his levers, and felt his lion slow down only slightly. With a thin frown, he pulled harder, but Red didn’t slow down any more. Only a useless whirr of the engines greeted his commands. “No, no, no. . .” Lance mumbled, pressing new combinations of buttons along Red’s dashboard and jiggling the controls to no avail. Red must have had something break in her engines. She could still move her body, but thrusters were nothing but dead weight. The weak stabilizing boosters that Lance could still control were slowing the lion out of its wild spin at an agonizingly slow rate, but still enough for a cruiser to fall into view in the front window. The cruiser that shot them? The massive cannon mounted on its roof slowly rotated itself into a new position. Shit. It wanted to shoot him again. And Lance had no means to get out of the way in a timely manner. As the cannon began its glowing charging sequence, fighters near Red maneuvered out of the way. “Guys! Red’s main engines are shot and I’ve got a cruiser taking aim at me. I don’t have any way to evade!” 

“I-I don’t think I can get to you, Lance.” Allura stammered, her voice shaking. Crashes and crunches sounded in the background of her transmission.

Lance wasn’t sure how to reply, so he didn’t; he just clenched the controls tighter and dug his teeth numbly into his bottom lip. Nobody else answered. Too preoccupied with their own enemies or maybe even already shot down. Now things were REALLY not looking good for the team. Lance had seen enough cruiser cannons fire to recognize when one was about to go off and this one definitely was. He always expected the moment before death to be filled with thoughts of his family or flashes of his whole life before his eyes. Lance couldn’t conjure any of those images in his mind. The only presence was a faint calm, his focus completely dominated by the mesmerizing fizzle of quintessence about to descend. Nothing but him, Red, and the cannon. Is this where he’s going to die? Looks like it. He loosened his hold on his controls and leaned back in his seat. As the blaster shone nearly at its brightest, Lance let his eyes fall shut and waited.

Nothing came. No jerk of the Lion from an impact. No crunch of torn metal. No vacuum emptying Red of all her contents through some gaping hole. Just more waiting. Lance didn’t want to peek for the sake of some false hope, but cracked an eye open anyway, curiosity getting the best of him. The first thing he noticed was the cascade of green light bathing the cockpit. The next thing he noticed was a small vessel floating no more than a few meters away from Red’s head. It was shining and pristine. Short wings of a compact and round structure protruded from its sides in a smooth transition that gave the ship the appearance of being constructed from a solid piece of impossibly immaculate chrome. Lance though through all of the space traveling ships he had seen in all of his adventures in Voltron, but this one didn’t seem familiar in the least. The green light that danced upon Lance’s dashboard was coming from some kind of force field that this strange new ship was generating. “Red Paladin? Are you okay?” buzzed an unfamiliar voice through a staticky connection.

“Uh, yeah. I guess.” Lance stammered uncertainly in reply as he twisted Red’s head around. The force field, being much more massive than it had seemed a moment ago, surrounded the entire lion. It’s surface was so alive with pulsating energy that he couldn’t see clearly through it. Was the cruiser still there? Whoever this stranger was, they needed to get both of them out of here. “Who is this? What are you doing to Red?”

“No need to worry! I’m with the Dematrians! We saw that the Lions of Voltron were fighting the Galra and came to assist.” As the stranger spoke more, the friendliness in his tone become more apparent, especially as Red began to receive the transmission with more clarity. It struck Lance how his speech was so casual. He made his statements matter-of-factly and confidently. It was oddly reassuring. “I know you can’t see anything, but I’ve got to get you to a safer location before I can release the shield. Our battalion is moving out to engage as we speak.”

“Battalion? How many of you are there?” Lance hardly got his last word out before the force field was abruptly extinguished. Before him lay a scene that sent his jaw dropping to the floor. The vast expanse of space that had been overflowing with hostile Galra fighters and cruisers only a minute or so before was now flooded with a uniform wave of vessels just like that one Lance had been communicating with. They pursued the the path of every Galra ship in the vicinity with deadly precision; mimicking every movement and even greater speed. Lance wondered if they were being flown by pilots or simply by some kind of sophisticated targeting system. Every Galra was rapidly meeting their end in blistering explosions brought on by Dematrians. 

“Yeah. Pretty cool, huh?” Lance could almost hear the smirk in the voice. Just then, a new screen flashed to life before him. As his attention turned back to his dashboard, Lance noticed the sudden lack of other displays. Now that they were somewhat safe, Red was shutting down. Lance could feel her exhaustion crash down upon him with a heavy wave a nausea. On the new screen, there appeared the portrait image of a human-looking alien with pale grey skin. He had dark eyes that, although mysterious, seemed friendly and warm. Now Lance could see the smirk that he had been envisioning. “Red paladin? Are you okay?” More displays were fading all around the alien’s image. Red tugged insistently at Lance, begging him to rest with her. 

“Yeah, yeah.” He mumbled with eyes already half closed. “Red is just pullin’ me down with her.” The voice sounded again, but it was distant and Lance didn’t care enough anymore to decipher the sounds in his ears. He was just tired. This seems like a development that Allura the diplomat could deal with later. He drifted into unconsciousness, the image of the friendly alien lingering behind his eyelids.


End file.
